


Marching Orders

by 16woodsequ



Series: Steve Rogers Has PTSD [11]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Fear of Flying, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Open Ending, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, SHIELD's A+ Parenting, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Has Issues, Steve Rogers Has PTSD, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Steve Rogers and the 21st Century, aerophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-13 09:22:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28651209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/16woodsequ/pseuds/16woodsequ
Summary: SHIELD sends Steve off into battle to fight Loki two weeks after he wakes up from the ice.It is more traumatic and triggering than he would probably like to admit.But it is fine. He can handle it. It is fine.
Relationships: Steve Rogers & Tony Stark
Series: Steve Rogers Has PTSD [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2124492
Comments: 23
Kudos: 86





	Marching Orders

Steve wakes up from the ice to find that he had _not_ , in fact, died when he had crashed Redskull’s plane into the Arctic.

Instead he is alive, (but he had been dead for seventy years), and now he is in the twenty-first century.

SHIELD takes it upon themselves to educate him and get him up to speed on this new, _modern_ world, and he supposes that is good of them to do. He gets crash-courses on technology, terminology, rules, pop culture, and history.

And he reads all the files diligently — even the painful ones, even the ones they had given him on all his friends from the war. The folder sits on his desk, and each file is a person he had known, a person he had fought with. They are all, one after another, stamped with a bright red stamp.

James “Bucky” Buchanan Barnes, **DECEASED** (1945) **.**

Timothy Alloysius Cadwaller "Dum Dum" Dugan, **DECEASED** (1980).

Jacques Dernier, **DECEASED** (1991).

Howard Stark, **DECEASED** (1991).

Gabriel "Gabe" Jones, **DECEASED** (1995).

James "Monty" Montgomery Falsworth, **DECEASED** (2007).

James "Jim" Morita, **DECEASED** (2010).

(Steven “Steve” Grant Rogers, **DECEASED** (1945))

Peggy isn’t dead. Peggy is still alive. Peggy had lived, and had been married, and had become a mother, and had become a widow. Peggy lives in an age-care facility in Washington D.C. Her file is the last in the folder, and it has a phone number for where she lives.

He stares at it, and he stares at the phone sitting plugged into his wall (because he has a phone now, and a SHIELD agent had spent an afternoon painstakingly going over how to use it — as though he has anyone he needs to call.)

He looks down at Peggy’s file, and he closes the folder.

There is a gym near his SHIELD-issued apartment. It is old, and it smells almost familiar, the ancient wood and dusty corners almost reminiscent of the gym Bucky used to drag him to sometimes. Back then, Bucky would try to teach him how to box, and he would try to keep his breath from wheezing too badly.

Now, he doesn’t box with anybody.

Now he pounds his way through the punching bags. He is strong enough now that, if he isn’t paying attention — if his mind gets stuck somewhere else, if he forgets where he is, forgets for a moment that he isn’t shouting out orders on a battlefield — he can destroy the bags. He can tear right through them, the sand leaking out of the splits in the seams as his fists sting and his heart aches for a different reason.

(He doesn’t have asthma anymore, but sometimes… sometimes he still finds it hard to breathe, his breath tight and thin in his lungs as he tries to pound his way into this century.)

The gym doesn’t mind his destruction — or, maybe more accurately, they don’t mind it when Captain America frequents their gym, as long as he is willing to pay for replacements. He gives them the money and tries not to think about it too hard.

He doesn’t have anything else to spend money on anyways (besides food), and SHIELD had informed him that the army had saved his backpay.

He is in the gym again, scenes from the war flickering behind his eyelids as he works his way through the punching bags, when Nick Fury of SHIELD approaches him. He stops to breathe, and the punching bag he had been working on is all the way across the room, sand spilling out from the bottom.

He steps away to grab the next one in line, his muscles barely straining as he lifts it up to hang on the chain.

“Trouble sleeping?” Fury calls, and he grits his teeth (his bed is too soft, he drowns in it.) He doesn’t turn around and he keeps his jabs more or less light as he tries to work out why Fury is here, and what he wants.

“I slept for seventy years, sir,” he says, careful to keep up the wall of soldier-and-commanding-officer between them. It is easier that way. That way he doesn’t have to think too hard about why everyone calls him Captain now. “I think I’ve had my fill.”

(The last time someone had called him Steve, it had been Peggy, and he had been crashing down into the Arctic.)

Fury steps up to the bench off to the side. “Then you should be out,” he says, and Steve can feel his gaze on him. “Celebrating. Seeing the world.”

Bile rises up in his throat because he doesn’t want to be celebrating _anything_ right now. What? Celebrate waking up to find everyone he knows is dead? Celebrate waking up to find the world has moved on without him? Celebrate waking up to find the only shape left for him to fill is Captain-sized?

He is too riled up now to continue with the punching bag, and he turns away, careful to keep his face neutral as he walks over to his bag sitting next to Fury. His hands feel shaky, and he keeps his eyes down as he begins to unwrap the tape from his fists.

(It is probably a good thing, that Fury had come at a time when he has yet to beat his knuckles bloody.)

Fury is still looking at him, and his movements remain sharp and controlled as he focuses on his hands. “I went under,” he says, working to keep his voice calm and measured as he speaks — no matter the fact that his heart pounds a sickening rhythm in his chest. “The world was at war.”

He is done with the tape, and he shoves it in his bag, sitting down to look up at Fury. “I wake up, they say we won,” he continues flatly, his mind feeling empty as he stares into Fury’s one-eyed gaze. “They didn’t say what we lost.”

And he doesn’t want to think about what he means by that, because he has read the boxes and boxes of files from SHIELD. His serum-enhanced memory is good for something at least. He knows the history. He knows what they lost.

“We’ve made some mistakes,” Fury says, calling his attention back to the present (and not say, for example, what SHIELD’s files had labeled as ‘the Conservative backlash of the 80s and 90s’.) “Some very recently,” Fury continues, and Steve takes in a breath.

Ah, now he knows why Fury is here.

“You here with a mission, sir?” he says, his shoulders squared to perfection as he looks at the man.

Missions… missions he can handle. He knows how to do those; he would even say he is pretty good at them. The twenty-first century would seem to agree with him. So far, it would seem, everyone around him seems to think Captain America had been the model soldier. He isn’t sure exactly how that had become the assumption — considering how Captain America had gotten started when Steve Rogers had gone rogue and attacked a Hydra base against orders — but now…

Now his knuckles itch, and his chest feels tight, and he needs something to do that isn’t staring down at bloody red stamps on ancient files.

There is a Captain-sized hole left for him in the twenty-first century, and everyone thinks that Captain America had been the perfect soldier.

( _A good man_ , Doctor Erskine had said. _Not a perfect soldier._ )

“I am,” Fury tells him, and he hands him a folder containing files on an all too familiar blue cube.

Steve’s hands are numb as he reads through it, and Fury explains that not only had SHIELD (Howard) found the cube years ago (when he had been looking for him), but they have now lost it, and _another_ egomaniac named Loki has it. He stares down at the acid blue cube, Fury continuing to talk as a rushing fills his ears and his vision narrows.

Should he be surprised?

Should he be shocked that he is fighting to keep the Tesseract out of the wrong hands, seventy years (and two weeks) after he had done it the last time?

His feelings seem a little far away at the moment, and he keeps his face blank as he closes the file and moves on stickman legs to go clean up the mess he had made of the gym.

“Is there anything you can tell us about the Tesseract that we ought to know now?” Fury calls after him as he reaches down to pick up the first punching bag.

_Redskull reaches down to grab the thing, and before his very eyes, he dissolves into the cosmos, his mouth open in a scream._

His hands tighten on the rough fabric and his vision blurs as he slings the thing over his shoulder and works on keeping his expression neutral. “You should have left it in the ocean,” he tells him as he turns away, and his voice doesn’t waver at all.

oOo

He sits in a plane (a quinjet, Agent Coulson tells him), and he reads the electronic files that Coulson had given him on the team Fury wants to put together. On screen, the angry face of a large green creature called the Hulk roars, and he swallows. His eyes dart over the rest of the file before he glances up to where Coulson is standing a few feet away.

(Standing, as though being on a plane doesn't turn his legs to jelly, as though his hands don’t shake until he fumbles around for something to distract himself with.)

“So,” he says, swallowing against the dryness of his throat. “This Doctor Banner was trying to replicate the serum that was used on me?”

Coulson’s face lights up as he looks at him. “A lot of people where,” he tells him, and Steve’s mind flashes back to Colonel Philips and the SSR, who had originally wanted a whole _army_ of super soldiers.

He isn’t surprised that people had tried to replicate the serum after his death, not really. But, as he looks down at the recording of the Hulk, he can’t help wondering if it had hurt just as much for Banner as it had for him.

“It’s an honour to meet you,” Coulson is saying, and he looks up again. “Officially,” the man stutters, turning into the flustered man Captain America seems to be able to make half the population nowadays. “I sort of met you,” he continues. “I mean, I watched you while you were sleeping.”

He tries not to tense as he looks down, and Coulson rushes to backtrack. “I mean, I was… I was present while you were unconscious from the ice,” he says, and Steve’s fingers are numb and cold as he sets aside the electronic device, Coulson continuing to talk. “You know, it’s really, it’s just a… just a huge honour to have you on board.”

Steve looks up, and he offers him what he hopes is something close to a smile. “Well,” he says, ignoring the way his serum-enhanced hearing makes the roaring engine of the plane (quinjet) twice as loud. “I hope I’m the man for the job.”

The plane lands on what Coulson tells him is a Helicarrier, and he gets introduced to both Agent Natasha Romanoff, and Doctor Bruce Banner. (And the Helicarrier turns out to be more than just a ship. The whole thing rumbles underneath him as it rises in the air, and long after they take off, he can still feel the minute vibrations of the thing — a giant hulking ship dragging itself through the sky.)

It is big enough, he can almost forget how high they are flying, as long as he doesn’t look out the windows.

There are SHIELD agents working on the ship like a hive of swarming bees, and it doesn’t take them long to find what they are looking for — the agent Loki had mind-controlled and kidnapped, Clint Barton.

“Captain, you’re up,” Fury orders, and he nods dutifully, turning away to find whatever uniform SHIELD and Coulson had set out for him.

He finds it laid out for him in a display case, like a prized museum piece, and— and the _shield_ at least, is the same, but the suit— he tries not to think about it as he strips down. The thing looks— It reminds him of his USO costume. The fabric is soft and cotton-like – nothing like the stiff Kevlar Howard had made his last suit out of, and the colours are bright and vibrant, unmuddied by time, sweat, and blood, like his last one had been.

 _A screaming target,_ Bucky would call it, if he saw it, and his ears fill with his voice as he tugs the thing over his shoulders. _You tryin’ to tell all of Hydra where ya are, Steve?_

Of course, Bucky isn’t _here_ , (Hydra killed him), and neither is Hydra (he killed it), and he shakes his head as he tugs sharply at his gloves and reaches down for his shield.

(Howard’s suit had had straps for him to sling his shield up onto his shoulders. This suit doesn’t have anything like that, and he is forced to keep his shield on his arm, his mind continually attune to the fact that doing so will slow his reaction time and put him in danger as he fights.)

He has to take another plane (quinjet) to get to where Loki and Agent Barton are, and he sits in the back as Agent Romanoff pilots the thing, his jaw clenched and his shoulders stiff as the engines vibrate under him.

It takes too long to get to Germany (and if he could relax his jaw long enough, he might actually laugh. Fighting in Germany, again. Seventy years (and two weeks) later.) His muscles are stiff and sore by the time they get there, and his mouth feels parched and dry as he swallows and forces himself up to where Romanoff is sitting.

“What’s the situation?” he gets out. His fingers dig into the headrest of the seat next to her, and he very pointedly avoids looking out the windshield in front of him, his eyes dropping instead to the confusing array of lights on the dashboard.

“Looks like Loki is making a move,” she informs him, her voice clipped and professional as she runs her eyes over the dashboard, before looking up and cursing as she looks out the window.

He can’t help glancing up at that, and as the ship approaches the city, he can make out a crowd of people sitting huddled together, the group frightened and cowed as a man dressed in green and gold threatens them with a wickedly pointed spear.

He can’t hear what the man is saying, but as he watches, he sees him single out a lone individual in the crowd, the old man standing alone in his defiance.

One look at Loki and he knows what is about to happen (it is the same thing that had happened when he had mouthed-off at the Redskull, the same thing that _always_ happens when small people stand up against the looming oppressor.)

“Get me closer,” he orders, quick and sharp, and Romanoff responds to the Captain in his voice, not even questioning it as he turns away, his mind settling down on what he needs to do next.

(Distantly, he is aware that part of him doesn’t actually _want_ to open the hangar of the ship and jump out, but that part is buried under the Mission, and, it gets him out of the plane, so it can’t be _that_ bad.)

It… isn’t, actually.

His mind feels sharp and clear as he leaps out of the plane, the adrenalin in his blood sending a rush through him that he hasn’t felt since— not since Bucky died. He sucks in a breath, the first deep breath in a long time, and he lands just in time to save the old man’s life.

That feels pretty good too.

The rest of the fight is a blur. At one point, Tony Stark flies in to assist. His suit flashes red and gold in his vision, and it is completely and entirely _different_ from anything that he has ever seen. That— that is good. He stares at it, and it doesn’t bring up any memories. No reminders of a past long-gone.

Once in the ship – Loki taken into custody (but Barton still missing) – Tony retracts his helmet, and he sees brown hair, and brown eyes, and familiar facial hair, and he has to look away.

SHIELD had given him a file on Tony Stark too.

Anthony “Tony” Stark, born 1970. He is fifteen years older than him (and that— that feels wrong.)

He tries to focus on the mission, his eyes shifting to Loki as he shares with Stark his concerns over the ease of the capture. Stark doesn’t seem to want to focus on that though.

“Still,” he says, his eyes flicking over him, something in his gaze that he can’t quite read. “You are pretty spry, for an older fellow.” Steve grits his teeth, and a scream rises up in him, because Stark is _fifteen years_ older than him, and he knows what he means, he _knows_ what he is referring to, but it still— “What’s your thing? Pilates?”

He blinks, and he feels off-balance, because here Stark is, one of the few non-SHIELD people to talk to him so far, one of the few people to talk to him about something other than the ice, or the future, and he doesn't know what he is talking about.

“What?” he manages, his tongue heavy and too large for his mouth.

“It’s like calisthenics,” Stark continues, and he actually _does_ know what that is. Before he can respond to that though, Stark finishes up. “You might have missed a couple things, you know, doing time as a Capsicle.”

Oh.

His hands are cold again, and his vision fluctuates for a second. Oh, he isn’t talking to him. He is talking about the ice again.

Anger surges hot and fast in his chest, and that is better than whatever else he had been feeling before, so he doesn’t fight it as he narrows his eyes and stares directly up at Stark. Stark meets his gaze with a look of his own, and Steve’s hands tighten on his belt.

“Fury didn’t tell me he was calling you in,” he says, without breaking eye contact, and Stark scoffs.

“Yeah,” he says dismissively, a sharp look in his eye. “There’s a lot of things Fury doesn’t tell you.”

Before he can respond — but not before a sour, sharp acid rises up in his throat — the entire ship vibrates around him, the sound of lightning loud in his ears as he glances around. His feud with Stark is forgotten as his palms begin to sweat, the cotton of his suit itching across his shoulders as he darts his eyes around in a perimeter scan.

He hangs onto his composure by sheer force of will.

He is stupid, and taunts Loki, because he doesn’t want anyone to notice his own fearful reaction, but in the end, it doesn’t matter because seconds later, the whole ship shakes again, something landing on the roof above them.

Ice is creeping up his legs, and his heart is pounding a deafening rhythm in his chest, and even if he could somehow force himself into action, he doesn’t have time to do anything before the hatch of the ship is opening. He glances up and _cold air whips over his face, his breath fogging in front of him,_ and someone darts inside, the man yanking Loki up and out of the ship before either he or Stark can react.

Stark snaps out of it first, the man’s helmet closing over his face as he goes to fly out of the ship. Steve gives a start and calls out after him, hoping to come up with a plan of attack, but this isn’t the Howling Commandos, and Stark has no reason to listen to him. Instead of waiting, the man leaves before they can agree on anything.

Fine.

He goes to follow, and he grabs a parachute this time, because they are higher up than they had been before. The leap out of the plane is the same as last time, and his breath catches as he freefalls for a moment, his mind clearing despite the cold of the air and tension of the situation.

He has to pull the chute before he lands though, and the clarity fades as the sound pulls him back to Azzano, when he had jumped out of another plane, gunfire all around him as he had pulled his chute and drifted down behind enemy lines, his mind dead set on finding Bucky again.

(Back then, they had told him he was dead, but he had gone after him anyway, and he had found him. Now… now he can’t do that.)

His thoughts get jolted to the present as he lands, and he finds that his serum helps him absorb most of the shock as he hits the ground. He sheds the parachute gear, and he wonders if he might be able to avoid using it in the future.

oOo

Eventually they manage to agree to bring Loki back to the Helicarrier (he does wonder why Loki had waited around for them to finish fighting and capture him again, but Thor doesn’t seem concerned, so he tries not to worry about it too much.)

Thor tells them of Loki’s plan, and the army he intends to bring down from space, and Steve tries to pull his weight during the discussion, but most of it goes over his head — no matter all the files, and all the crash-courses from SHIELD. He doesn’t know anything, and the Captain-shaped hole around him seems to be getting smaller.

Stark and Doctor Banner go off to study Loki’s scepter, and he finds that SHIELD has nothing of him to do now that there is nothing to punch. (During the war, he had been good at the planning side of things too. He had had to be, in order to lead such a small team on covert raids all over the place. He had known how to use his team then. He had known what he was doing. The Captain-shaped hole hadn't seemed so confining then.)

He decides to go try to figure out what he is missing from Stark and Banner, but all he ends up doing is getting into an argument. He doesn’t— he doesn’t exactly _mean_ to, but his nerves feel strung out and worn, and that is _before_ Stark starts dancing all over them, the man biting out cutting remarks one second, before implying that SHIELD is darker and shadier than they would like the next.

(SHIELD, that Peggy, and Howard, and Colonel Philips had built. People he had trusted. They had started SHIELD, but he had never seen it then, all he gets is this sharp, cold shadow.)

But do they have time to focus on SHIELD? Loki had been messing with the Tesseract (like the Redskull). He wants to bring an _alien army to Earth._ “I think Loki's trying to wind us up,” he says stiffly, glancing between Stark and Banner. “This is a man who means to start a war, and if we don't stay focused, he'll succeed.” He curls his hands into fists by his side, and the stupid cheap leather of his costume suit sticks to his skin. “We have orders, we should follow them.”

Orders are safe right now. He can manage if he is following orders. Everything else is too much, but if he has a mission to follow—

Stark tilts his head at him. “Following is not really my style.”

Anger sparks in his chest again, and he goes along with it, because it is _easy_ , and because he doesn’t have time for this. He doesn’t know why Fury had brought in civilians, but this would be a lot easier if he was working with other soldiers, people he could trust to take this seriously.

He smiles, bitter and sharp. “And you’re all about style, aren’t you?” he says, and he can tell he hits a nerve, Stark’s eyes flashing as he takes a step closer.

“Of the people in this room,” he starts, his eyes cold and cutting, (Steve almost doesn’t mind though, because _this_ at least isn’t detached professionalism. This isn’t star-struck hero worship. This is something _real._ ) “Which one,” Stark continues. “Is, A. wearing a spangly outfit, and B. not of use?”

His words slice right through him and he stiffens into a solid block of ice again as he fights against reacting. (Things are different now. Captain America can’t get into fights anymore. Never mind that that had been the only way he could survive for years. Never mind that letting things slide had used to represent an open invitation for further harassment from bullies.)

He doesn’t know if he would have been able to keep a grip on his temper (because the worst part about what Stark says, is it’s _true_ ), except for the fact that Banner cuts in and says the one thing on Earth that could possibly distract him now.

“Steve,” he says, and his gaze gets torn away from Stark, his mind stalling as he gets called by his name for the first time since waking up. “Tell me none of this smells a little funky to you?” Bruce continues, but he hardly registers anything he says, his mind still too caught up on what he had called him.

He feels shaky and nauseous, and he can’t handle that in front of Stark and Bruce, so he shuts it all down. He squares his shoulders and pulls Captain America over him like a shield, his voice rock-solid as he avoids Stark’s gaze and looks at Bruce.

“Just find the cube,” he orders, and then he turns, the spin executed perfect enough to please his drill instructor (if he were still alive), and he marches out of the room.

oOo

His anger fades as he leaves the lab, and his mind settles into something more calm and calculating. It would be a mistake to ignore Stark’s suspicions completely. _There’s a lot of things Fury doesn’t tell you,_ his words echo back at him, and he is struck with the sudden, sharp awareness that he doesn’t really know much of _anything_ beyond what SHIELD has been telling him.

SHIELD had found him, and SHIELD had been helping him.

But…

But… just _exactly_ how far is he willing to trust them? (He has not forgotten the fake room he had woken up in. He has not forgotten those moments of terror when he had fled and burst out of the lie. He has not forgotten running, his heart in his throat, certain that at any moment, the people chasing him were about to open fire.)

All at once he is consumed by the overwhelming _need_ to do _something_. The urge sits buzzing frantic and anxious under his skin, and he can’t stand to wait for whatever program Stark has running to finish. He needs to do something _now._

He breaks into one of the storage units of the Helicarrier, and he isn’t even really sure what he is looking for. The warehouse is large, the metal shelves filled with stacks of wooden crates, traces of dust lingering in the corners as he looks around.

(What is he looking for? He doesn’t know.)

His skin crawls, and his breath sits tight in his lungs as he looks. His teeth grind together, and he _doesn't know what he is looking for_ , but he moves forward anyways, his eyes scanning over the stacks and stacks of crates. He stops and pulls one open, a pile of old SHIELD uniforms staring up at him.

Not what he wants.

He moves on, leaping up to the catwalk above as his mind flashes back to the reason he is even _here_ ; the Tesseract that Howard had found for SHIELD. _He thought what we think,_ Fury had told him that night in the gym, when he had come with the mission. _The Tesseract could be the key to unlimited sustainable energy._

He thinks back to Howard’s work during the war, and the piles and piles of efficient and effective weapons he had created, and he thinks that is a lie.

Even so, he isn’t prepared when he stops and tears open another crate. The crack of the wood is sharp and sudden in his ears, but he hardly notices it, his eyes wide and his breath frozen in his chest as he stares down into the box.

Bile rises in his throat, and his hand drops down to the edge of the crate, the wood groaning unhappily as his grip tightens and he tries to breathe. His eyes remain pinned on the crate where — nestled carefully amid the straw — weapons from his nightmares stare up at him.

Hydra weapons.

He could never forget them. Tesseract-powered Hydra weapons that scatter people into dust when they strike. Hydra weapons, like the one he and Bucky had been fighting before Bucky had—

He sucks in a breath, the sound sharp and furious in the stillness of the warehouse, and the next thing he knows, he has the blaster gun in his hands, red filling his mind as he turns and swings himself down from the catwalk. The sounds of his footsteps pound fast and angry ahead of him as he stalks back down to the lab, and as he walks, he is half-aware of a startled SHIELD agent darting away, the man’s eyes widening at the sight of his murderous glower.

The weapon burns in his grip and he only _just_ manages to get a handle on his expression as he marches into the lab. Stark and Bruce are still inside like last time, but Fury is inside too, and from the sound of it, Stark is confronting him.

“What is PHASE 2?” he asks, as he spins the computer monitor around to face Fury.

Steve finds his anger kicking up a notch as he comes in, and he doesn’t waste any time marching forward and slamming the gun down on the table, drawing the attention of everyone in the room.

“Phase 2 is SHIELD uses the cube to make weapons,” he bites out, his heart pounding furiously in his chest as he glances up at Stark. “Sorry, the computer was moving a little slow.”

The line should give him a moment to calm down, but instead, Fury turns to him, the man’s eye darting between him and the conspicuous gun on the table. “Rogers,” he starts, and Steve fights to keep from grinding his teeth, the name grating across his already frayed nerves. “We gathered everything related to the Tesseract,” Fury continues, his voice low as he tries to smooth everything away.

 _Shut up!_ he wants to scream at him, because how stupid do they think he is? Misunderstanding seventy years of pop culture references and being blind to the darker side of humanity are two different things.

Fury continues though, and his anger only grows. “This does not mean that we’re—”

Before he can respond, Stark interrupts. “I’m sorry, Nick,” he says, his voice sharp and sarcastic as he turns the monitor towards him again. “What were you lying?”

His eyes drop down to the screen, and his blood freezes in his veins. Bombs. Onscreen is a schematic for a bomber plane, the exact same kind that he had crashed into the Arctic and _died_ to stop.

His vision blurs as anger surges in his chest, and his hands shake into tight fists as he turns to glare over at Fury. “I was wrong, Director,” he snaps, his ears ringing as cold creeps up his toes into his boots. “The world hasn’t changed a bit.”

After that, things deteriorate even further. Thor and Romanoff come into the room at some point, but things get kind of blurry from that moment onwards. His anger is as strong and as sharp as ever, and it feels hot and cold, and red (white) and blue in his head as he suddenly finds himself shouting at Stark, his fists itching as he pushes for a release.

His mind spins as he speaks and the others argue around him. SHIELD is monitoring him, and Thor claims that SHIELD’s work with the Tesseract has alerted the universe that Earth is ready for a _higher_ form of war — as if they hadn't _just_ finished destroying each other in the _last_ war (seventy years and two weeks ago.)

He says things that he shouldn’t say, and Stark spits back acid just as well, and he pushes and _pushes_ , and Steve is _standing in the alley, and he can’t back down, because that will invite worse treatment, so all he can do is swing the first punch because the next punch is coming_ anyways—

Except Captain America can’t swing wildly, back alley brawls won’t _fix_ this — so instead he bites back with words.

“You know, you may not be a threat,” he spits out at Stark, his eyes hard and his anger burning in his stomach. “But you better _stop_ pretending to be a hero.”

“A hero?” Stark’s eyes dig into him, and the rushing in his ears is louder than ever. “Like you?” The man steps closer, his own fury pushing and straining at the edges as he puts down poison. “You're a lab rat, Rogers. Everything special about you came out of a _bottle_.”

The words sting, and he would pull back in pain— except that would be giving ground, and he can’t afford that, so he digs down and draws his shoulders back instead. “Put on the suit,” he bites out, his knuckles itching. “Let’s go a few rounds.”

His head pounds, and his pulse is loud in his ears. The rest of him is numb, and he doesn’t know what his breath is doing but his toes are frozen, and he gets distracted away from Stark because Romanoff is worrying about Bruce and the Hulk.

And then Bruce is yelling at them about how the Hulk (the serum) kept him from dying – even when he wanted it – and his words hit like ice daggers. His anger freezes and clears away for a moment, the ringing in his ears pausing just long enough for him to actually look at Bruce and _see_ him.

“Doctor Banner…” he says slowly, his voice loud in the sudden silence. “Put down the scepter.”

Bruce looks down at the staff in his hand like he genuinely hadn't known it was there, but they soon get distracted away from it as the computer beeps and helpfully informs them that the Tesseract has been located.

And just like that, they almost get into an argument _again_ over who will retrieve the Tesseract — but it turns out that the computer had located the cube because it is _right on top of them_ , and their argument gets lost as Loki’s brainwashed army descends upon the Helicarrier.

An explosion rocks the ship, the sound filling his ears as he is thrown off his feet. The brief feeling of weightlessness reminds him all too much of his zero-gravity fight with the Redskull in the plane, and it is only his rough landing a few seconds later that manages to keep him present and in the right century.

He can hear the ship straining around him, shouts and screams of frantic agents filling his ears as somewhere, a fire burns. The shrieking of tearing metal is all too familiar, and his heart is back to pounding a mile-a-minute as he scrambles to get up again, his mind searching around frantically for his shield—

And then he remembers with a cold drop of horror that his suit doesn’t have shoulder straps anymore, and he had left his shield in the locker room instead of keeping it on his arm—

 _Focus!_ his mind screams, and he sucks in a breath tinged with dust and smoke as he forces himself to his feet. He has a mission, he can focus on that, he can _handle_ it, if he focuses only on the mission. To that end, he wraps up his growing panic and shoves it behind him, his gaze zeroing in on Stark as the man struggles to get up next to him.

“Put on the suit!” he barks, acting every inch of the Captain everyone expects him to be.

Stark doesn’t hesitate. “Yup!” he says, and Steve finds himself pulling the man up, his mind spinning as he tries to figure out what he needs to do next. His frazzled mind manages to register Fury slipping on an earpiece, and he is reminded that that is what people use now, instead of radios, and he reaches for the one he has stored in his utility belt.

That, at least, he has with him.

The ship is in chaos (and falling from the sky), and it is all he can do to keep his balance and keep his nerve as he follows Stark down the crowded halls. According to Fury, one of the engines has been hit, and if they lose _one more,_ they will go down.

(Into the water, again, because Fury had repositioned the ship so that they won’t rain down destruction on land.)

Stark takes over, for the most part, and Steve finds that his own frustration at his lack of useful knowledge helps keep his mind on track, and eventually he manages to get Stark to explain what he needs in smaller words. Stark flies into the rotors of the engines themselves, and he is left to guard his back against the invading agents.

This, at least, he knows. This is familiar. Fighting in chaotic clarity, the knowledge that one wrong move could get people killed. One mistake is all it takes to lose the upper-hand, and he can’t _afford_ that sort of thing—

Except he slips, and he almost falls right off the ragged edge of the Helicarrier. He is left hanging over the ledge, his teeth clenched and a thin cable everything that stands between him and oblivion. And— _he is hanging off the side of the train, his hand outstretched and his heart in his throat, Bucky’s eyes desperate as he reaches back for him and—_

He can’t think about that though, because _Stark needs him to pull the lever_ , and it is all he can do to drag himself back up again. His muscles strain and his breath grunts out of him at the effort, but he manages it, relief seeping into his bones as he yanks on the lever and Stark escapes the engines, the man blessedly alive, and more or less well.

oOo

Others are not so lucky.

Loki killed Coulson. Bruce and Thor are gone— lost. And Loki had killed Coulson in his escape.

Romanoff is busy keeping an eye on the recently recovered Agent Barton, so it is only him and Stark that sit dejectedly on the bridge of the Helicarrier, Fury’s shoulders stiff and straight as he informs them of Coulson’s death.

“These were in Phil Coulson's jacket,” he says flatly as he tosses a few bloodied cards onto the table. Steve looks down, and his stomach goes cold. He reaches for them, and the blood smears on the glass tabletop. “Guess he never did get you to sign them,” Fury says, his voice sounding far away in his ears.

Fury continues on about his hope for the Avengers team he had wanted to build, his words echoing emptily in his head. His mind is mostly focused on the blood on the cards, on the blood on his hands.

(He had been uncomfortable when Coulson had asked him to sign them, but—)

And then the mission shifts. It is no longer just the marching orders that Fury had given him. It is the same mission, but this time it is personal.

To that end, he goes around and tries to mend fences with Stark. Now that their initial clash is over, he no longer feels as volcanic in his presence. The words the man had said still hurt, and he can feel them settle just under his skin — but he is self-aware enough to know that he had said his own share of vitriol.

And he doesn’t have time to lick his wounds anyways.

He forgets, the others around him don’t have as much practice marching on after the loss of a friend. (He had— he had learned to handle it, in the war. Even after Bucky, he had managed it. Mostly. Everything had frozen over, everything but a burning anger and a growing vendetta against Hydra… but he had managed it.)

(He had managed to stop Hydra, at least.)

“We are _not soldiers,_ ” Stark bites out at him, the words a backlash of pain and anger, only some of it directed at him. “I’m not marching to Fury’s fife!”

“Neither am I,” he counters, because everyone, _everyone_ thinks that Captain America is the perfect soldier now, but that isn’t how it started. That isn’t what he is. That isn’t what he is doing.

People are going to die if Loki isn’t stopped. He doesn’t care about orders right now. The mission is bigger than that. Thankfully, Stark seems to see it too, and he has a pretty good idea of where Loki’s next attack is going to be coming from.

(Is it ironic that he will be protecting New York again? Seventy years and two weeks after the last time.)

oOo

They don’t have orders, but that doesn’t matter. He knows what he needs to do. He needs a way off the Helicarrier first, and he hunts down Agent Romanoff, his shield back in place on his arm as he stands in the doorway of the bunker she is holed up in.

“Can you fly one of those jets?” he asks, because there is no power on Earth right now that could convince him to get into the driver’s seat for one of those things any time soon. Not even Loki.

Behind Romanoff, a man who he assumes is Agent Barton walks out of a small bathroom. His face is lined with exhaustion, and he has bags under his eyes, but his gaze is determined when he looks up at him. “I can,” he says.

He looks at Romanoff, and she nods, and right now that is enough.

“Suit up,” he tells him.

It isn’t hard to commandeer a quinjet. It should be harder, but it isn’t.

He marches through the hangar with Agent Romanoff and Agent Barton, and the SHIELD pilot inside the quinjet they choose does his best to put up a fight. “You are not authorized to be here…” he starts, and Steve pulls up every shred of the USO Captain America he has in him.

“Son,” he starts, giving the man a look, his voice filled with projected authority. “Just don’t.”

And that is enough.

He tries not to think about it too hard. Instead, he settles himself into the back of the quinjet, his shield by his knee as Barton and Romanoff take the seats up front. Barton’s claims over his ability to fly seem to be true, the man moving confidently as he settles down and starts the ship.

The engines catch and rumble underneath him, and Steve finds his fingers digging into his knees, his jaw clenching as Barton blasts off and he is pushed back into his seat. The actual flight itself isn’t so bad. He doesn’t have to look out the window, so he doesn’t have to see the scenery as it rushes by, and Barton flies smooth enough that he can mostly keep his mind focused on the present.

The flight gets choppier when they get to the city though.

Stark had gone on ahead of them, but he hadn't been able to stop Loki from activating his Tesseract portal, and now a pillar of blue light shoots up into the sky from Stark Tower. Steve can’t help getting up to stare out the windshield at that point, and he watches wide-eyed as dozens of flying hostiles swarm the city, Stark’s efforts with his suit looking small and insignificant in comparison.

It is impossible for Barton to fly straight with the alien hostiles, and Steve finds his stomach swooping as they swerve and dip on their way up to the Tower. His pulse doubles as they fly, and he can feel it pound in his mouth as they get closer.

He can’t take his eyes off the windshield though, no matter how much he would like to sit down. His legs don’t seem to be responding to his commands at the moment.

He twitches as the sound of firing bullets fills the air, and he realises the Barton is using the ship’s defense system to help thin out the hordes of invaders. Their main focus is the Tower though, and up on a platform, he can see Thor engaged in a hand-to-hand battle with Loki.

It is good to see that Thor is alive and fighting, and Barton pulls the jet up to start firing at Loki. The god doesn’t even flinch at the attack, the spray of bullets hardly seeming to touch him. They _do_ seem to make him angry though, and the next thing Steve knows, Loki is aiming the scepter towards them, the staff letting out a blast of blue light straight at their engines.

It is around this point that Steve loses his grip on things.

On some vague level, he is aware of Barton doing his level-headed best to keep them from tail-spinning and crashing to their deaths, but it all feels far away. Black smoke fills the air, and metal screeches as they flounder, the ship jerking and spinning now that it is down an engine.

Standing up had been a mistake. He has nothing to cling to — nothing to stabilise himself as they spiral downwards. His hands reach up instinctively to hang onto the roof struts above him, and after that, it is all he can do to keep breathing.

He can’t let go— even if he wanted to. His fingers are numb as they dig into the support struts, and he drags in a ragged breath, the air sharp and cold in his lungs. The jet dips, and his heart leaps up into his throat as he is swung off his feet, his mind spinning faster than the doomed ship.

Nausea swims in his stomach, and his vision narrows, his breath loud in his ears as he _tries to keep his voice even. His grip is tight and painful on the steering wheel in front of him, but he tries not to let his fear creep into his voice. Peggy is on the radio next to him, and the ice is approaching in front of him, and he can feel the cold wind of the Arctic as it blasts through the cracked windshield. He doesn’t have much longer now—_

His whole world jolts as they land. He gets torn from his strangle hold on the roof, and pain explodes in his knee as he lands hard against the side of the jet. He doesn’t really notice though because as he looks down _he wakes to find ice water pooling around his broken ankle. The whole ship groans around him, and the radio spits static next to him. His teeth are already starting to chatter is he shifts, and he knows immediately that his ribs are broken, the dashboard of the plane digging into him as he—_

He drags in a breath, the sound loud and desperate as he tries to push himself up, the rest of the world not quite in focus as he glances around.

“You good, Rogers?” Romanoff calls, and he manages to see both her and Barton, the two of them seemingly unfazed by the crash as they systematically unstrap themselves from their seats.

Right. Yes.

The mission. They are focused on the mission. And he—

“Yes, I’m fine,” he says. (No, his ribs are broken.)

He clenches his jaw, and his teeth dig into his tongue as he forces himself to his feet, his eyes darting around for his shield. He spots it laying off to the side, the crash having thrown it across the ship. His breath feels thin and trapped in his chest as he reaches for it, but he is careful to keep his breathing even as he stands upright.

He can’t deal with the crash right now. His hands shake if he thinks about it, and he can’t handle that right now. Not with Barton and Romanoff watching him, and not with an army of aliens waiting for him out in the streets.

“Alright, let’s go,” he says, his shoulders straight and stiff as he pulls his shield onto his arm and turns to run off the ship, the sound of fighting from the street already loud in his ears.

(He tastes blood when he swallows, but the serum will heal his tongue soon enough, so he ignores it.)

oOo

The battle blurs together with every other battle he has ever fought. It needs to, because if he thinks too hard about the fact that he is fighting _aliens,_ and what Stark dubs ‘space whales’, then he will remember how far out of his depth he is right now.

A man out of time, fighting an alien invasion with a metal disk and a tri-coloured costume.

Bruce comes, and the Hulk at least manages to fend off some of the space whales, and Steve mostly does his best to try to keep civilian casualties to a minimum. It… is easy to slip back into the rhythm of fighting.

This he knows. This he has experience with. He knows how to tune out the horror of the death and destruction around him. He knows how to keep focused and bark out orders. His mind is used to the speeding calculations that comes with a battle.

The Avengers aren’t the Howling Commandos, but he can adapt, and they are willing to listen to his orders for now as he sends Barton up to be his lookout, and tries to get Stark and the others to keep the invasion relatively contained.

After that, it becomes a rhythm of duck, punch, throw— and catch the rebound. Over and over, the sounds of the fight, and the chatter of the other Avengers echoing in his comms. For his part, it isn’t difficult for him to shift into the calm, solid place he had previously found during long battles in the war. But, as he fights, he can’t help noticing the growing exhaustion on Romanoff’s face as she fights next to him.

 _We are not soldiers,_ Stark’s voice echoes back at him, and he remembers suddenly that Romanoff is a spy. She isn’t used to this, she is used to slinking in the shadows and striking when the moment is right, not the dirty, constant melee fighting they are currently slogging their way through.

It is his responsibility to take care of his teammates, and Romanoff will be useless if he doesn't use her skills properly, so when she mentions the need to shut the portal down, he doesn’t hesitate to send her up to the Stark Tower.

Her exit does mean that he is mostly fighting on his own now though. As much as this battle reminds him of his time in the war, the dynamic is still different. Civilians are everywhere, and his allies duck in and out of the scene, the group mostly working on their own towards a common goal, rather than operating solely under his command.

And that is fine, but at one point, he finds himself alone, fighting in the streets, the sounds of firebombs and screams filling his ears as he rams his shield into yet another alien. His side aches as he swings— he had injured himself earlier, saving a bunch of herded civilians. His suit is torn, the light material no match for an actual battle, and despite his serum— despite his experience fighting like this, he still finds himself getting out of breath, his mind becoming overwhelmed by the constant influx of enemies.

He has to stay focused though. If he doesn’t pay attention he could die, and there are so many targets, so many variables— so much that could go wrong—

He ducks out of the way as a shot comes out of the sky, an alien ship passing through his blind spot as he hunches down. He doesn’t think, and his mouth opens automatically to shout out an order he is far too used to giving.

“I need you on my six, Buc—”

The world stops for a moment, and he chokes off, his eyes widening as he sits frozen in the rubble. The sound of the battle fades, the sound of his rapid heartbeat covering everything as he stares blankly out in front of him.

Distantly he is aware that his breathing has gotten out of control again, but there isn’t much he can do about that right now, because he suddenly remembers all over again that this _isn’t_ Europe, and he _isn’t_ fighting with the Commandos, and Bucky _isn’t here,_ because— because—

He is dead. Seventy years (and three weeks) ago.

His body shakes, and his mind spins in blank numbness. He can’t feel his hands anymore and he can’t _breathe—_

“ _What was that, Cap?”_

The sound of Barton’s voice cuts into his thoughts, and his teeth dig into his tongue again as he tries to drag himself into the right century. The ground under him shakes as an explosion erupts nearby, and he pulls in a breath through his nose. Focus. He stands, and gravel scrapes sharply under his feet as he forces himself up, his shield digging into his hands as he clutches at it.

He can feel his mind still wanting to spin off in horror, but he doesn’t have _time_ for that now. Not now. Not in the middle of a battle. He needs to focus. He can deal with the other stuff later.

He swallows bile back and he raises one hand to his ear, willing his voice to stay steady as he responds to Barton. “I’m making my way back to you,” he tells him. “I need someone on my six.”

He keeps fighting, and hope rises in his chest as Romanoff announces that she has a way to turn off the Tesseract. Hulk is apparently taking care of Loki, and the end of the battle actually seems in sight. 

“ _Wait!_ ” Stark calls, just as Romanoff is about to shut everything down. “ _I’ve got a nuke coming in, it’s gonna blow in less than a minute.”_ His voice drops _. “And I know just where to put it_.”

Steve’s stomach clenches with sudden nausea at the situation. A nuke. He knows what those are. SHEILD had given him a file on the end of the war, and he knows that they had dropped two atomic bombs on Japanese cities (five months after he had died to keep bombs from falling on New York.)

He knows what nukes do, and he knows that flying the bomb up into the portal is a one-way trip.

Stark knows that too.

He flies in anyways.

He knows it is a one-way trip, but he can’t help waiting. His shield is limp in his grip and the seconds stretch out as he stares up at the portal Stark had flown into, his heart pounding in his throat.

“ _Come on, Stark,”_ he hears Romanoff chanting over the comms, and he can’t help echoing her sentiment internally, his eyes pinned on the sky. He can’t wait forever though — not with the threat of an alien invasion. He can’t wait, and one thing he had been forced to learn during the war was how to make the hard decisions.

Someone needs to make them, and this century has a Captain-sized hole for him to fit into. Captain Rogers is good at making the decisions that Steve Rogers doesn’t want to think about.

“Close it,” he says to Romanoff, his heart sinking with his words.

She does, but the very instant she does — at the exact last second before the portal closes — Stark comes tumbling through, his suit flashing red and gold as he spins through the air.

He had made it (and if Steve had given the order even a _second_ earlier, he wouldn’t have, but he isn’t thinking about that right now.) Stark isn’t slowing as he nears the ground, and Hulk leaps up to catch him, Steve’s heart pounding fearfully as he and the others race to go meet him out in the streets.

The suit is dark and lifeless when he comes up to see Stark laying sprawled out on the ground, and ice has found its way into his stomach, his body cold as he stares down at him. His hands are numb again as Thor rips the helmet off of Stark’s slack face, and he finds himself sinking to the ground beside the body.

His mind dips and threatens to slip away, and he doesn't want to think about Howard’s son dying in front of him before he had even managed to say a single civil word to him. His mind flashes back to what he had shouted at him in the Helicarrier, and his stomach rolls with nausea.

He isn’t _ready_ for this. He isn’t ready for another person to die. Not yet, not now—

Behind him, Hulk grunts in frustrated anger, the creature stomping forward before he lets out a _roar_ of fury. The noise echoes loudly in his sensitive ears, but he hardly notices, because in front of him, Stark jerks awake, the man’s eyes darting around as he sucks in a sharp breath.

“What—?” he starts, his eyes catching on his. “What just happened? Please tell me nobody kissed me.”

He can’t stop the smile that grows on his face, relief rolling through him like a wave. His shoulders slump as he sucks in a breath, his eyes on Stark. “We won,” he says, a faint tremor in his hands as he tries to ride out the rollercoaster of emotions his body is experiencing.

Beside him, Stark chatters, the man’s voice helping keep him present as he gathers his thoughts and recovers from the intensity of the battle. “Have you ever tried shawarma?” Stark asks the group at large, and Steve has no idea what that even is, but he finds he doesn’t really mind right now.

“There’s a shawarma joint about two blocks from here,” Stark continues, waving his hand at them. “I don’t know what it is, but I wanna try it.”

oOo

Before they can try shawarma, they have to deal with Loki. Steve doesn’t hesitate as he reaches down to help Stark to his feet, and the man in turn doesn’t hesitate to accept his hand.

“I’m glad you’re alive,” he tells him earnestly as he pulls him up, and he finds Stark’s eyes flicking over him consideringly. There is a flicker of something in the depths of his eyes, before he blinks it away and tilts his head.

“Hey, me too,” he says with a flash of a grin, before turning away. “Now let’s wrap this up. I’m hungry.”

It actually doesn’t take long to take Loki into custody. The god is still in the Tower where Hulk had left him, and he seems to know he has lost. He surrenders more or less easily, and soon SHIELD is swooping into gather up him, the scepter, and the Tesseract.

Steve feels some trepidation at leaving the Tesseract with SHIELD — considering what they were planning on using it for, but thankfully, Thor makes it clear that the cube is coming home with him. SHIELD doesn’t have much leverage to argue the point, and soon the matter is cleared away.

The scepter gets whisked off somewhere though, and once Bruce transforms back from the Hulk, he tells them all that he thinks the thing had been manipulating their emotions the whole time it had been in the Helicarrier.

Steve nods at that, but he knows internally that the anger the scepter had worked off of had been there naturally.

He doesn’t have much time to wallow in that though, because after Loki is taken into custody, they actually _do_ go and get shawarma. The group tromps into the dusty, shaken shop, and Steve has to give credit to the employees who had stuck around inside for the entire invasion.

The shop is all too keen on feeding them — since it is likely they won’t be open again for a few days, and there is no sense in letting the food go to waste. It is good the food is more or less unlimited, because Steve suddenly gets reminded that not only has he not eaten since this morning, but he had just fought in various capacities for _hours._

His serum-enhanced metabolism is not happy.

“Wow, you sure can put away a lot,” Barton comments, the man watching him as he eats at the same pace as Thor (shawarma he finds, is completely different from the forties food he has stocked in his apartment. He likes it.)

“Well,” he says around a mouthful of fries. “It's free. An’ I’m hungry.”

He can feel Stark’s eyes on him as he eats, but he ignores it. He finishes faster than the other Avengers, and he feels pleasantly full for the first time in a long time. Most days, it is hard to remember about his enhanced metabolism, and food is so expensive now anyways. But now…

But now his stomach is wonderfully warm.

He sits in the quiet of the shop, and his exhaustion catches up to him. The other Avengers look worn out too, most of them focused on their own food as they eat and try to recuperate a little from their fight. His eyes feel heavy, and he rests his elbow on the table, propping up his head as his eyes drift shut.

He… hasn’t been sleeping well. His bed is too soft, and the stillness too quiet around him. But here… here this is familiar. He is used to drifting off to sleep with the muffled sounds and smells of the Commandos around him.

Back then, that had been safe. And now…

A hand reaches to shake his shoulder, and he doesn’t know how long it has been since his eyes have slipped closed.

“Hey, Cap,” someone calls. “You awake?”

The world snaps back into clarity, and he finds himself flinching instinctively from the touch, his vision bleary as he blinks his eyes open. His mouth opens, and maybe if he hadn't been half-asleep, he wouldn’t have said it, but as it is, the words tumble out automatically as he shakes himself awake. “My name is _Steve._ ”

It comes out harsher than he means, and he blinks and looks up to find Stark standing next to him, his hand out and a _look_ in his eyes. He can’t read it, he doesn’t know what it means exactly, but it is different from the sharp buried anger that had been there before, and Steve has to look away as Stark swallows.

“Sure thing,” he says, and Steve bites the inside of his cheek.

oOo

After the battle in New York, and after Thor, Loki, and the Tesseract had been shipped off, he returns back to his apartment.

Things are… quiet.

He has his gym, and his too-soft bed, and his cheap, sensible food. (SHIELD takes back his suit, and his shield.) He tries to slip back into the routine he had been living in _before_ all of this, and he keeps up the careful habit of Not Thinking.

He is good at that.

About a week after the battle, he comes back from his morning run to find a file from SHIELD sitting on his table, and a message sitting on his answering machine.

The file is, unfortunately, not a surprise. He has the keys to his apartment, and he keeps his door locked, but files make it into his house anyway. His skin crawls unpleasantly as he looks at the folder, and he tries not to think about it too hard.

The message is more of a surprise — since he doesn’t actually think anyone has his phone number, and he stares at it for a moment, before turning to the file. He will get that over with, before investigating the mysterious message.

The file is blunt and straightforward, and he probably shouldn’t be surprised by the contents. SHIELD wants to move him to D.C. SHIELD wants to make him a full-time agent. SHIELD wants to recruit Captain America.

He swallows dryly, and turns to the phone, his hand only trembling a little as he presses the button that will play back the message.

 _“Uh, hi,”_ he blinks as Stark’s voice greets him, the man’s voice sounding small and tinny as it plays out of the machine. “ _JARVIS got me your number, so I am assuming this is right,”_ he continues, and Steve settles down next to the phone to listen. “ _If you’re not Steve Rogers, then just ignore, I guess.”_

His mouth cracks up into a smile at that, and he listens as the message continues. “ _Anyway. I’m calling cuz I’ve been thinking of this Avengers stuff Fury wanted and— while I’m not too hot on the whole SHIELD thing, you have to admit that we did pretty good in the end.”_

He hears the man swallow for a moment, before he continues. “ _Right, anyways. I’m rebuilding the Stark Tower now, since, you know, Loki blew some holes in it, and… well, I was thinking, if you wanted, we could set up base there. An Avengers Tower, if you will.”_

Steve blinks at that, since he had not been expecting the offer at all, and he sits stunned as Stark wraps up.

 _“Just an idea,”_ he says, and Steve can practically see him waving his hand dismissively. _“But yeah, the Tower is open, if you want it.”_

The message clicks off, and he is left to sit in silence as he thinks over what he had just heard. His eyes flick over to the file on the table, and the mission orders it contains. His tongue darts out to lick his lips, and he breathes in, his gaze dropping back down to the phone.

Orders from SHIELD, and an offer from Stark.

His eyes glance around his empty apartment for a moment, before darting between the file and the phone again.

He has a decision to make.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired by [this](https://16woodsequ.tumblr.com/post/639606117908021249/veryspectacularspiderling-itsallavengers-the) tumblr post, and [this](https://youtu.be/BqUaJOHyWhk) clip of the battle of New York (starting about 2:45), where it is actually canon that Steve is in a plane that crashes during the battle.
> 
> The more I wrote this fic, the more I realised how traumatising the first Avengers was for Steve, so that was fun.


End file.
